2002 Carol Kearnes USQ
2002 – Carol Kearnes – University of Southern Queensland
While an employee at USQ Carol campaigned hard for a rule change to allow general staff to become full members of the union. Once that was achieved she quickly rose to leadership positions within her Branch. Her last position within the union was Branch Vice-President (General Staff). She was also elected a National and Queensland Division Councillor. In those roles, Carol represented the interests of general staff with extreme dedication. She was regularly asked to participate on panel discussions at the National Council to represent the views of regional university employees.
Carol was also a member of the University Equal Opportunity Committee and the Affirmative Action Sub-Committee and also attended Women’s Conferences. She was the driving force behind the Personal Harassment Policy that has now been implemented at USQ. As part of the enterprise bargaining negotiating team, Carol has fought to maintain and improve working conditions for all staff at USQ. Quite often, she would represent members’ interests, attend conferences and meeting in her own time and often to the detriment of her own well – being. Despite obstacles put in her way, Carol was always optimistic, cheerful and never spoke ill of anyone. A genuinely nice person but with the will courage and dedication to help others, we believe that Carol deserves the recognition of being an Emma Miller Award recipient. Always a dedicated unionist and genuinely concerned with higher education issues in her long service at the University of Southern Queensland, we wish her well in her retirement.